Cali, Salento & Bogota

After Medellin, we took a flight south to the Salsa capital of the world, Cali. The city itself isn't very nice in my opinion, little bit run down and apparently not very safe in a lot of areas. So there wasn't a huge amount to explore during the day - it is much more of a nighttime place. So besides going for a few walks we spent the mornings and early afternoons working in a cafe next to our hostel. Once it got to the later afternoon, there were different events organised by the hostel each day. We did a Spanish lesson and a couple of Salsa lessons and some other social activities with the other hostel guests. Salsa is quite hard it turns out, especially the Cali style. Our teacher kept throwing in lots of fancy footwork to keep us om our toes. We also went to something called Salsa Street which happens every Friday and involves thousands of locals pouring into a huge street and eberyone dancing to Salsa music blaring out of loud speakers in the street. Was hectic but very fun to be amongst all the locals, they were all going nuts. They are all very good at Salsa as they've been doing it since they were kids. They have a saying which they kept shouting "Cali es cali lo demás es loma". Sadly because there was so many people around, neither me or jodie wanted to take our phones out to take any pics or videos... Actually I don't really have any pictures of Cali since we pretty much only went put at night when I didn't want to bring my phone out! So no photos on this penguin are from Cali.

After Cali, we headed to a small colonial mountain town famous for coffee and cocoa called Salento. It reminded me of a ski village, but surrounded by really nice mountains and natural scenery. We were staying in a very nice looking hostel here, had a great view of the town and the sunsets every night. I did a coffee tour here which was interesting and jodie and I played a local game called Tejo which was really fun. It is similar to boules only that you are throwing big stone disks and instead of getting it close to a small ball, you need to get it close/to land on small bits of paper packed with gunpowder. When the stone hits the paper, there is a really loud bang and the paper goes on fire. Different points for how close you are/actually exploding it. We were with a group and a few of us had hit the paper somehow without an explosion so we decided to sneakily add loads of gunpowder and paper to our aisle. Then jodie's turn came, and she landed directly on the paper, which caused a massive explosion! We also did a tour of some nearby tall palm trees, which was good fun.

For our final stop in Colombia, we headed to Bogota for a couple of nights. Bogota is known as la nevara by the Colombians because of how cold it is (to them). Temp tends to be in the lare teens usually there. It was actually quite a nice break from the heat, and I finally got to wear my fleece in the day, pretty much for the first time in South America. We did some more salsa lessons in Bogota which was fun, and actually helped me improve quite a lot (Jodie is already much better than me). We then had dinner with some new friends from the hostel and called it a night. Got to explore Bogota a little but during the day, although mainly in the Candaleria district. From what I saw, it's a pretty nice city with lots to do and see. I also didn't realise how big it is, population of 11 million! So there's loads that I didn't get to see sadly.

After a short stay in Bogota, we took a flight to Guatemala which is where I am now. Next 🐧 will be on that.

Stay frosty. 🐧Baca lagi